ZTE to Announce First Gigabit Handset at MWC

ZTE to unveil its first gigabit handset at Mobile World Congress 2017.

Image: Susan Fourtané

The Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 will take place from February 27th to March 2nd in Barcelona, Spain. The topic of this year will be: The Next Element. The agenda is already packed with must-attend presentations, panel discussions, and product announcements.

Among those announcements, ZTE will unveil its first Gigabit handset, featuring 360-degree panoramic VR video capabilities, instant cloud storage, and enhanced HD video as well as providing an Improved entertainment experience. This will include a fast cache of high quality music, and video content.

The soon to be announced ZTE Gigabit phone marks an important advancement for the 5G mobile era.

The company has not revealed yet the full specifications of the new handset. However, ZTE is expected to launch its Gigabit Phone alongside an upgrade version of its flagship Axon 7, and also new devices in the Blaze series.

According to the company, the new device "will revolutionize connectivity with a new standard of download speeds, 1Gb/second, bringing a qualitative leap to a new world of mobile experience."

The only disadvantage --although perhaps not for long-- is that 1Gb/second speeds can only be found in Sydney for now, with other Australian cities joining later this year thanks to Telstra.

Telstra, the largest mobile carrier in Australia, was the world's first to roll out a commercial Gigabit LTE network in January in conjunction with Qualcomm, Ericsson, and Netgear. The test boasted speeds of 930.45Mbps down and 127.54Mbps up.

Australia will become the first country to deploy Gigabit LTE starting in 2017 followed by The United States, The United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Russia, and several western European nations that are part of the global Gigabit LTE plans alongside with further 47 operators across 37 countries that are planning on deploying a subsection of the technologies required for Gigabit LTE.

The download speeds coming along with Gigabit LTE will require devices able to accessing next-generation technology. Current-generation devices cannot connect to Gigabit LTE networks unless it has hardware support for Gigabit LTE, such as the ZTE Gigabit Phone. Similarly, a device that does have Gigabit LTE support needs a cellular network that has rolled out Gigabit LTE towers in their area to make use of all its capability.